/ Financial systems & fractional CFO · Hamilton & the Golden Horseshoe · remote across Canada

The fractional CFO who fixes the systems behind your numbers.

Your operational systems and your books tell different stories. That's why the numbers are three weeks late and never quite trusted. I fix the connections between them, then turn the clean data into margin, cash, and decisions you can defend — for owner-led businesses that run their operations on software, whether that's field crews, a clinic floor, or a dozen locations.

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Big Four

PwC-trained, Series B/C CFO experience

$50M+

construction group controller background

on Google for Hamilton fractional CFO

actual margin plan

01 Two ways to work together

One firm. The strategy and the system that produces it.

Most fractional CFOs interpret whatever numbers land in front of them. Most software consultants never touch the finance. Steel City CFO does both — which is why the numbers actually hold up.

Service line 01

Financial systems architecture

The specialty that sets me apart: connecting the software that runs your operations — ServiceTitan, Procore, or Jobber for contractors; Jane for clinics — to QuickBooks, Sage, or Xero so the data feeding your books is clean at the source. Current billing, reconciled cash, real job costing.

Field software → accounting, mapped properly Payment clearing & reconciliation that ties Starts with a $750 + HST Diagnostic Audit

Contractor systems Clinic systems — The Clinic Ledger

Service line 02

Fractional CFO

Senior finance leadership on a part-time retainer: forecasting, margin and cash, board and lender reporting, fundraise and M&A support. For owner-led companies that need more than a bookkeeper but can't justify a full-time CFO.

3-statement models & driver-based forecasting Job-cost, WIP & margin you can trust Board, bank & investor reporting

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/ Who this is for

Contractors & tradesIn person · Golden Horseshoe

ServiceTitan, Procore, or Jobber into QuickBooks or Sage. Job costing, WIP, invoices out the same week. Built for $2M–$20M operations.

Clinics on JaneRemote · Canada-wide

Deposits that tie to the bank, GST/HST handled properly, clinician margins, and a month-end close that actually closes. Via The Clinic Ledger, my dedicated clinic practice.

Multi-location groupsRemote · Canada-wide

POS and booking systems into one consolidated set of books — and a clear view of which locations make money. Franchise and multi-site operators.

02 What a $750 audit usually turns up

The money is almost always hiding in plain sight.

Every engagement starts with a fixed-fee diagnostic. On a typical contractor running ServiceTitan, Procore, or Jobber into QuickBooks or Sage, here's the order of magnitude of what the first pass tends to surface — before a single fix is made.

$82k

in unbilled work

Completed jobs that never made it onto an invoice, sitting idle in the field system.

silent sync errors

Records that looked posted but rejected underneath — missing invoices, payments, and jobs.

jobs below target margin

Crews and projects quietly losing money, invisible because the cost data never tied out.

$146k

in cash to chase this week

Receivables the owner couldn't see clearly enough to collect on time.

How to read this: these are representative figures from the kind of mid-market contractor I work with — not a guarantee for your business. The point is the pattern: the problems are real, they're recurring, and a fixed-fee audit puts hard numbers on them so you can decide what's worth fixing. Your audit gives you your figures.

03 Why the numbers can't be trusted

Bad financials usually start before accounting ever sees them.

You can't run a company on numbers that arrive late and don't tie out. For operations-heavy businesses, the root cause is upstream — in the pricebook, cost codes, payment flow, and exports that decide whether the books mean anything. A CFO who can't see that far up the pipe is guessing.

In the field system What accounting sees The fix

Custom line items, weak pricebook

Revenue lands in generic buckets and margin by service line disappears.

P&L looks right on top, useless underneath

Sales are there. The detail to manage crews, jobs, and departments is not.

Rebuild the item + GL map

Map products, business units, classes, and accounts so detail survives the sync.

Batches post, records reject

The export looks complete until someone checks the failed records underneath.

Invoices, payments, or jobs go missing

Owners see stale AR, bookkeepers chase exceptions, nobody owns the queue.

Install a reviewed cadence

Define who posts, who accepts, who checks rejects, and what gets escalated.

Gross invoices ≠ net deposits

Merchant fees, refunds, tips, and payout timing get mixed into revenue.

Bank rec becomes detective work

It reconciles eventually, but the process burns hours every single month.

Use a clearing workflow

Separate gross sales, fees, refunds, and deposits so cash and revenue both tie.

Cost codes, SOV & forecasts drift

Procore or ServiceTitan knows the job reality. The accounting system does not.

WIP is manual, late, inconsistent

Bank, bonding, CPA, and owner reporting turns into a spreadsheet scramble.

Build the WIP bridge

Use project data to support the accounting schedule, not replace the GL.

Booking platform ≠ ledger

Jane batches, processing fees, and clinician splits never land cleanly in QuickBooks or Xero.

Month-end drags for weeks

Deposits don't tie, GST/HST gets guessed, clinician margins stay a mystery.

Reconcile at the source

Map payouts, fees, and taxes so the close takes hours, not weeks.

Four locations, four systems

Each unit's POS or booking stack reports on its own; nothing rolls up.

No unit-level P&L

One blended number hides which locations make money and which leak it.

Consolidate the portfolio

One chart of accounts, per-unit margins, a single group view.

04 The systems-architecture edge

The build depends on the software you already run.

ServiceTitan, Procore, and Jobber do not fail the same way. This is the work most fractional CFOs can't do — and it's why the financials I report from actually reconcile. Each engagement respects what the system is good at, where it stops, and what the books must still own.

ServiceTitan

Trade / service

Dispatch, service work, AR, pricebook complexity, and sometimes project work — all in one heavy system.

Common diagnosis: Batch exports look posted, but record-level rejects, payment clearing, and GL mapping aren't controlled.
Build focus: Pricebook mapping, BU/Class structure, merchant clearing, export cadence, WIP bridge where enabled.

Procore

GC / civil

GCs and project-heavy trades where WBS, commitments, change orders, owner billing, and WIP all matter.

Common diagnosis: The connector exists, but WBS, cost codes, cost types, and accounting origin rules were never designed first.
Build focus: Cost-code crosswalk, approver routine, owner billing, retainage treatment, monthly WIP bridge.

Jobber

Home service

Higher transaction volume, QuickBooks Online, short jobs, and customer lists that have gone messy.

Common diagnosis: Jobber and QBO were connected before customer, item, tax, and payment data were ever cleaned.
Build focus: Duplicate cleanup, products/services structure, Jobber Payments rec, QBO Projects/Classes, crew profit.

Diagnostic Audit

$750 + HST · fixed

The map before the build. No retainer.

Jobber Sprint

$2.5–3k + HST

Clean lists, payments rec, profit view.

Procore Integration

$4–6k + HST

Cost-code crosswalk and WIP bridge.

ServiceTitan Build

$5–8k + HST

Mapping, clearing, cadence, job cost.

All fees are in CAD and exclusive of HST. Full systems-architecture detail lives on the services page.

05 For accountants & bookkeepers

I work upstream of your work — never across it.

When the field software is misconfigured, the books arrive late and messy. Your team cleans the same symptoms every month: generic revenue, duplicate customers, deposits that don't tie, WIP built by hand, job costs nobody trusts.

Where I fit — I don't do tax filings, compilations, or bookkeeping. I fix the operational software and the accounting workflow before the data reaches you, so your team receives cleaner books and far fewer recurring exceptions.

How the referral partnership works

06 Who you're working with

A real finance leader — not a brand with a stock photo.

Kevin Cosgrove, founder of Steel City CFO

Kevin Cosgrove FOUNDER · FRACTIONAL CFO

Strategic finance for companies that have outgrown a bookkeeper.

As an independent fractional CFO, I run strategic finance and FP&A for a portfolio of Series B and Series C software companies — 3-statement models, driver-based forecasting, ASC 606 revenue recognition, board and investor reporting — and I led an M&A sell-side process through to a strategic acquisition. Before that I was controller for the largest entity in a family-office group spanning heavy civil construction, asphalt production, and real estate, with revenue over $50 million.

That combination is the point. I've sat in the operator's seat in construction and the strategic-finance seat in fast-growing software, and I started my career on the audit side at PwC. So I can model your next three years and fix the ServiceTitan-to-QuickBooks pipe that's making this year's numbers wrong. Most people do one or the other.

Track record: Big Four (PwC) trained. Fractional / portfolio CFO to Series B–C SaaS. Led an M&A exit to a strategic acquirer.
Operator depth: Controller of a $50M+ construction & real-estate group — job costing, WIP, covenants, multi-entity.
The rare part: I fix the operational software feeding your books — ServiceTitan, Procore, Jobber → QuickBooks, Sage.
How I run: An AI-native finance stack across close, FP&A, board packs and AR — leverage, with judgment kept human.

/ Start here

Start with the numbers. Decide from there.

A fixed-fee diagnostic is the low-risk way in — $750 + HST for contractors and multi-location groups, $500 + GST/HST for clinics: no retainer, no commitment to anything after it. You get a clear map of what's costing you — and if I can't find problems worth more than the fee, I'll tell you that plainly. I take on a limited number of new clients each month to keep the work hands-on.

Book a Call kevin@steelcitycfo.com

Diagnostic Audit: $750 + HST · fixed · no retainer Fractional CFO: $2,500–$5,000/mo + HST Serving: Hamilton → Golden Horseshoe & beyond